YouTuber Dan Olson was quite astute pointing out how director Ralph Bashki’s rotoscoping animation approach was a precursor to the VFX-heavy era of modern blockbusters. Little did Olson realize, though, how accurate this comparison would be with 2025’s Snow White. Specifically, this Marc Webb directorial effort echoes Bashki’s Cool World in suspending a live-action protagonist in a disorienting animated world. That early 1990s film plopped Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt into an intentionally repellent seedy animated land. Meanwhile, Snow White leaves poor Rachel Zegler stranded among hideous CG dwarfs and fake-looking woodland critters masquerading as “cute” scene-stealers. Something trying to sell so many stuffed animals should not be evoking Cool World.
Plus, leaving this talented leading lady trapped in an endless deluge of CG just accentuates the pointlessness of Snow White. If it’s all just animated again (though this time with worse visuals and less striking colors), then what’s the point of remaking the first Walt Disney Animation Studios title?
Everything about Snow White suggests indecision and miscalculation, including in its weird plot. It’s time once again for a Disney Animation live-action remake offering up answers for “plot holes” that nobody cared about. For this new incarnation, Snow White (Zegler) is the daughter of now-deceased noble rulers. Their kingdom has fallen into the wicked clutches of The Evil Queen (Gal Gadot), who has turned a land of farmers into soldiers scouring every corner for jewels. When Snow White is deemed “the fairest of them all” by her Magic Mirror, The Evil Queen decides it's time for Snow White to perish.
You know this part of the story, but once White is lost in the woods and finds a cottage belonging to the Seven Dwarfs, things get bizarre. Webb and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson proceed to alternate wildly from either slavishly faithful recreations of 1937’s Snow White or just doing entirely new material. In the latter category, Snow White begins to romantically fall for thief/Glenn Howerton dead-ringer Jonathan (Andrew Burnap). Him and his ragtag group of barely defined thieves dredge up some snarky commentary on the typical “princess problems” of fairy tales fresh from the year 2005.
Meanwhile, the third-act’s “all is lost” moment hinges on Webb and Wilson doing a speed-run of the original Snow White’s entire finale. Everything from The Evil Queen transforming into an elderly woman, a poisoned apple, and an unconscious Snow White is jam-packed in here like so many clothes crammed into the tiniest suitcase. Naturally, trying so much within such a confined runtime leaves Snow White feeling more hollow than exhilarating. Emotional connections between these characters (particularly Snow White's bond with and Doc and company) especially fail to coalesce. It’s also strange how this story spends so much time trying conceptually “new” storytelling elements before doing another yarn where Snow White falls in love with a dude she’s met on two separate occasions. Excessive narrative running around lands Snow White and audiences in a deeply familiar spot.
That overabundance of activity fills the eyes with absolutely repugnant visuals. Yes, it’s time to talk about those Seven Dwarfs realized with truly hideous CGI. These fantastical creatures occupy a spot in the Uncanny Valley where their neighbors are the Polar Express cherubs and those realistically animated Lion King critters. Who watched the original Snow White cartoon and yearned for Doc, Grumpy, and company to look so realistic and have off-putting skin texture? Webb’s insistence on resorting to claustrophobic close-ups Happy’s jiggling cheeks just makes the exorbitant details extra off-putting. Furthermore, why do these seven characters often move like the film’s running at .75 speed, which really undercuts attempts at broad slapstick? Character actor Martin Klebba has some amusing line deliveries as Grumpy. However, they’re totally wasted on a digitized character whose every inch is a misfire.
The subpar imagery extends beyond those fantastical figures living in a woodland cottage. Snow White’s various animal pals (one adorable hedgehog exempted) aren’t much better realized. Critters like a deer or turtle have deeply realistic designs except for these egregiously massive eyes, a dissonant approach that doesn’t click together one iota. Then there’s the way Webb, cinematographer Mandy Walker, and editors Mark Sanger and Sarah Broshar capture Snow White’s various musical numbers. Last year, fellow movie musicals Wicked and Better Man enthralled with crisply rendered set pieces.
No such visual confidence materializes here. The handful of dance numbers with lots of people displaying footwork emerges with disorienting editing that sees the camera constantly cutting between various cramped shots. There’s never a moment when audiences can just soak in the choreography and costumes. New ditty "Princess Problems," meanwhile, aims to be a two-hander between potential lovers who initially can't stand each other like La La Land's "A Lovely Night." There's no zippy fun or energy, though, here with the limp staging and surprisingly stiff camera. I did get an unintentional chuckle, though, out of “Princess Problems” abruptly briefly cutting to a trio of animal spectators clapping along to the song. You know a musical number’s going well when you must remind audiences they’re supposed to enjoy themselves!
To be fair to Snow White’s visualists, perhaps there was only so much energy and ingenuity that could emerge when executing the insipid lyrics of this feature’s new songs. Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are responsible for the forgettable fresh Snow White ditties, Just like their Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, The Greatest Showman, or Aladdin (2019) tunes, Pasek and Paul serve up generic pop songs and call it a day. Opening song, "Good Things Grow", immediately establishes this problem by lacking the detailed lyrics of other musical number tunes introducing viewers to a specific location ("Belle", "Mountain Town"). The occupants of Snow White’s kingdom don’t exhibit much personality thanks to lyrics tailor-made for Imagine Dragons or Maroon 5.
Snow White’s big new ballad, “Waiting on a Wish," meanwhile, wastes Zegler's incredible voice on a song that sounds like a B-side Rachel Platten track. God bless Zegler for still exuding tangible powerful emotions in her vocal deliveries and on-screen physicality while belting out such a tepid knock-off of showtune power ballads like "Defying Gravity" and "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going." Easily the worst of these tunes, though, is the Evil Queen's big song "All Is Fair,” which bombards audiences with the sight of Gal Gadot rapping. Pier Paolo Pasolini would struggle to imagine a more torturous cinematic sight than that.
Gadot’s inability to sing is just the tip of the iceberg in a staggeringly terrible performance riddled with bad line deliveries. When she tries going over the top for “All Is Fair,” she channels a straight woman doing an impression of a drag queen after seeing only ten seconds of RuPaul clips on TikTok. Every ounce of her work exudes cringe-inducing miscalculation, not the fearless conviction underpinning great camp performances. It doesn’t help that anytime Gadot interacts with Snow White’s leading lady, the former West Side Story star totally outshines her. Watching Gadot try to act against Zegler is a lot like trying to watch George Burns out dunk Shaquille O'Neal.
If anyone comes out of this disaster unscathed, it’s Rachel Zegler. Her voice alone is so glorious, just listening to her hitting those high notes is a gift. In her screentime, she exudes genuine emotional believability making Snow White’s displays of kindness so warm and inviting. It’s outright criminal, then, that the auteur behind The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Only Living Boy in New York, and the music video for Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” forces her to interact with CG abominations and deliver terrible Pasek & Paul songs. Zegler’s performance radiates conviction and tangible humanity, so why is she stuck in a movie so narratively conflicted and hollow? She and musical cinema fans everywhere deserve better than Snow White, a feature full of animated imagery too unpleasant even for Cool World.